Intimate Relations, Rebecca Forster [best ereader for manga .txt] 📗

urban myth for all anyone knows." Thomas moved his hands to frame another imaginary box. "Over here is Ding Xiang's box. It is filled with evidence of his existence."

"Thomas, might we just open Ding Xiang's box and see what's got you so excited," Finn asked.

"Sorry." He took Cori's hand and gave it a squeeze, as if to say she was going to be very proud of him. "You aren't going to believe this."

She put her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her upturned hand.

"Amaze me," she drawled before putting a major dent in her bourbon.

"Ding Xiang was—is— a wunderkind. Twenty years ago he was responsible for a huge leap in Chinese tech. He was maybe twenty-five at the time. The People's Republic of China said he was fifteen when he first advised the government, but that's suspect. Anyway, his claim to fame is that he figured out how to wire Beijing. He gave the government a way to gather reporting data on every citizen, every minute of the day. It was a thing of beauty. Actually, it's terrifying from a social standpoint, but from a tech point of view it was way ahead of its time.”

"A few years go by and we're doing our thing over here. We've got Gates and Zuckerberg and all the rest of them weighing in. We've got all sorts of discussions going on about privacy. Congress is being all hysterical that we don't want to be China. At some point someone realizes Ding Xiang is out of the picture. No one knows what happened."

Thomas looked at Cori. He looked at Finn. He looked over his shoulder at Geoffrey, twirled his finger for another round, and got a 'oh yes, mon' in response. Thomas didn't miss more than one beat.

"Only computer geeks would have noticed—"

"Or computer geek lawyers," Cori said.

"Thomas, can we get to the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow. A computer expert helping our victim up off the ground is not seeming to be earth shattering news."

"Okay, okay."

Thomas took a deep breath. He rifled through the papers and laid out some articles for Cori and Finn to peruse.

"Bottom line, our guy disappeared from the world stage. No one knew where he went or if he's really gone. If the Chinese government took him out, they aren't saying; if he defected, whatever country he's in is not claiming him.”

"Then we get the dark web. After all the sweetness and light of the Internet, it turns out there's a parallel universe operating that isn't so nice.  Ding Xiang resurfaces on the dark web in a big way. No one knows where he is physically, but he speaks about his work. He has segued into cyber security and spyware that is not sanctioned by any government."

"Where can we hear him?"

"I'll send you the file. It's not the clearest but it's interesting. The guy is definitely some kind of social mutant. It's painful to watch him talk. Worse to hear him."

"And..."

"And here be your drinks."

Geoffrey interrupted with another Guinness, bourbon, and Long Island Ice Tea.  Thanks were given.  The man read the room and left them to their work. Thomas leaned over the table. He lowered his voice.

"Ding Xiang has his mark on everything in the tech world. Word has it he's made billions selling his spyware to countries on blockchain platforms. Nobody can prove exactly who has it, but there's circumstantial evidence. More than one country has been caught flatfooted after some deep secret reveal that has no other explanation than Ding Xiang software."

"Think Julian Assange on steroids?" Cori asked.

"Double steroids," Thomas agreed. "But he's branched out. He's got his finger in medical R &D, communications, farming, just everything.  His empire is so interwoven it's hard to tell who owns what and who does what.  But if you take the time you can trace a lot of it directly back to him."

"So he moved off the dark web and back into the mainstream?"

This time it was Finn who huddled, hunching his shoulders, taking up some of the press Thomas had brought, reading as the lawyer talked.

"Yes, but I doubt he's left the dark web behind. That's where the fun stuff is.  Some of his interests are too controversial for the open market. He's got a hand in cyber warriors, bots that can be put into water supplies. The bots are particularly scary. I mean, you could use one of those things to inoculate a population, but on the other hand you could kill everyone with a turn of the tap. Then again, Ding Xiang has done amazing things with hydroponics, surgical robots, prosthetics..."

"Whoa, there," Cori said. She turned to Finn. "Emi's patent?"

"Could be," Finn said, not wanting to jump ahead. "Go on, Thomas."

"Here's the bottom line. Ding Xiang believes technology can run the world better than human beings. He's the original matrix guy, and right now he's the Bigfoot of technology. Except that with this photo we have proof that he was in Los Angeles, at The Brewery, on the night your victim died."

Thomas finished. All three of them took a drink. They considered the papers spread over the table. Ding Xiang was a mysterious and worrisome addition to an already sticky problem.

"But this isn't the Matrix, guys." Cori was the first to speak. She disliked the darkness, and the tech, and the sci-fi story Thomas was peddling. The explanation was simpler. "If he was at an Asylum party he's just another dick head."

"But one interested in our dead girl," Finn added.

"Or not," Thomas said. "He went to her aid. Nobody saw him with Roxana.  All you know is that he was in the same place as the Asylum people. The video was taken outside. I could destroy you in the courtroom if you tried to pin a murder on him and that's all you brought."

"But we know he was inside. Enver Cuca admitted they were arguing by the stairs," Finn said. "And the Cucas' stories matched. They